25 best cold-opens in SNL history
By David Rouben
17. Kim Jong-il hijacks the SNL cold open
Despite knowing how dangerous making fun of North Korea can be (see: The Interview), SNL hasn’t shied away from doing it over the years. When Kim Jong-il was in office, their most notable sketch came when Amy Poehler played him — try to get that image out of your head if you can. But he also addressed the nation in a cold open, in what turned out to be a stirring rebuke of American propaganda. Played by Horatio Sanz, and translated by Maya Rudolph, it’s hard to find this sketch online, although that’s probably for the best.
He calls Jimmy Carter one of President Bush’s henchmen, perhaps mistaking him for his father. He then explains he’s not easily intimidated and so unhinged. He suffers from practically every mental illness in the book, and doesn’t take medication because his paranoid psychosis makes him believe his doctors are secret robot assassins. At one point, he even interrupts his address to review Sweet Home Alabama, and reluctantly calls it charming.
He explains his actions as suffering from Agnosia — he could easily sell plutonium to Al Qaeda thinking it was a box of Wheat Thins. He then lists his split personalities — Mae-Mae, a schoolgirl, Sung, a sexually flamboyant bon vivant who sometimes knows Italian, and John Vanbiesbrouck, former New York Islanders goalie.
Ironically, Kim at one point exclaimed “I am not Saddam Hussein”, even though Hussein is one of Horatio Sanz’s most well-known impressions. The writing is utterly fantastic, and while they may have been apprehensive about this sketch when it aired, they certainly weren’t afraid to let their creative juices flow.
This might have been the most daring parody of Kim Jong-il and North Korea at the time, until Team America: World Police came out a year later and blew all satirical conventions out of the water.